Rosemary’s Garden
She looked to Hera for answers
but the goddess was busy tending
to the marital bliss of others.
Rose, not Mary, pushes past
sympathetic spices—cinnamon, ginger,
cardamom—the memory of delicate
powder held soft in mother’s hand.
She reaches
for a jar of rosemary. Rosemary
all nettles, inflexible, thorny.
Outside, a Purple Finch
his perching feet
hold tight a rose bush bundled in
its winter coat; burlap beneath
a warbling song.
He, too,
is on watch.
Rose bends
forward, leans to the window.
The bird is not purple
at all, but dipped
in raspberry. His notes, rich
in regret, shake
the hinged wooden frames above
Mary’s garden. Birdsong,
a ballad of no means
makes its way to the room
above mother Mary’s kitchen.
where Rose, replaces Mary.
From "Brushing Back History" a chapbook of poetry by Valerie Poulin.